Larks and Goats and Poetry with Han VanderHart

Welcome to In Three Poems, where we read three poems with a different guest poet each week, and the third poem is always a work by another poet, chosen by our featured poet. 

Transcript

Han VanderHart (00:00)
The orchard in my childhood. Apple, pear, cherry I fell from and a plum tree neglected every spring. A jelly fungus taking the purple fruit. No soft plums in the fridge. There was so much

I thought I could not have. Obedience I thought I had to give. My child body bruised. My heart kept like an abandoned fruit tree or goat to a tether.

David (00:38)
Welcome to In Three Poems, where we read three poems with a different guest poet each week. And the third poem is always a work by another poet chosen by our featured guest. Our guest poet on this episode has poetry and essays published in Poetry Daily, Kenyon Review, the American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner.

poet lore, Agni, and elsewhere. We'll talk about even more of that, including the fact that they're the host of the Of Poetry podcast and editor of Moist Poetry Journal and co-editor with River River Books.

David J Bauman (01:18)
We're talking with Han Vander Hart to the author of Larks. It was published by Ohio University Press in 2025. And it was the winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize.

You've also published the chapbook, Hawk and Moon, which I had to pick up from you in person when I saw you with River River Books at Lit Youngstown back in October. And I think the first thing that I read of yours was back in 2021 with Bull City Press, What Pecan Light And that's where I fell in love with your images and your imagery.

Welcome to the podcast, Han. I appreciate you being here.

Han VanderHart (01:59)
Thanks for having me, David.

David J Bauman (02:00)
it's a pleasure. Absolutely. Now you're coming off right off the uplift of having a poetry group But also recently you were to AWP in the last few weeks. You've just had a piece published in DMQ Review, And you've just been a very, very busy poet and editor along with those other hats of parent and partner.

So you and I think have both had a very busy year. It's a delight to finally get a chance to talk with you.

Han VanderHart (02:28)
same.

David J Bauman (02:28)
I should say that you are also the host of one of my favorite poetry podcasts, the Of Poetry podcast, and you just published what episode 86, is that right? That's wonderful. think this is when this comes out, I think this is episode 14.

Han VanderHart (02:41)
I think so.

David J Bauman (02:48)
I am constantly listening. And that's always ⁓ just a balm to my heart.

I appreciate what you do.

the way this works is we read three poems and two of them are by you and one by a poet that you've chosen. And tonight you've chosen a poem by Catherine Rockwood.

So I appreciate you letting me read the poem Invocation.

That was in Poetry last year, I guess, in April of 2025.

So here we go. This is invocation. We're going to just jump right in and then we'll talk about Invocation. I do not know whether it is morning or morning. The name of the doves calling in the hems of the day. Sometimes I do not know the spelling of a single word or why the couple gesture in their car.

making a left turn. Tonight the clouds settle on the mountains, pale pink, and then mist, and then no mountain. Almost every day I say to someone, it is not important, but the wing of it, the beak, the onyx eye, is that I do not know this either.

I love this piece, And not just because there's a bird. that simple...

Han VanderHart (04:13)
Thank you.

David J Bauman (04:17)
bringing the reader in in the first line ⁓ with a question that a lot of people have had, especially if you're not a bird nerd like I am. And wait, is it a morning dove? Is it in the morning or is it morning? And ⁓ that lures you in, making you feel like, this is a simple little piece, but it's some heavy stuff. I like that you break it up as you go visually in the poem, each line.

has a break in the middle of the line. When we talk forms, forms have been something that keeps coming up, whether it's a created sort of free verse or whether it's a People in this season have talked about a form being a container that you put the poem in. How do you think the form helped you with this?

Did that come later as you started writing and you realized, ⁓ you know what, it needs this.

Han VanderHart (05:13)
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I love the visual caesura and the gap. I think I've loved that since I first read Beowulf and saw the line split. So I like working across a pause and recognizing in that in some way other than like a comma or like, there are so many ways you can punctuate that, right? ⁓

David J Bauman (05:38)
yeah.

And it makes you stop and read it more slowly because you're thinking, how does the author intend me to read this?

And there's only one of the lines, second to last, that has more than one break.

So there's sort of a turn, right there almost every day I say to someone, it is not important. And of course the turn there at that but. And maybe there's more than one turn because maybe no mountain almost right in the middle is also.

well you're North Carolina, so ⁓ this inspired a little bit by the landscape there or were you visiting another place?

Han VanderHart (06:23)
Yeah, was visiting, I was a poetry fellow for the Frost Poetry Conference. So this is the White Mountains, which are Robert Frost's mountains.

David J Bauman (06:29)
okay.

Yeah, yeah.

It's funny because I was thinking, I forgot about that, but I was looking at a Robert Frost quote earlier that said about how a poem starts as a lump in the throat. And I was, ooh, that's a good, I should ask Han about that. If that's how it works for you.

Han VanderHart (06:51)
He says, he says the best,

he says the best things about poetry. Like I can't stay mad at Frost ever. Like I was at a hotel room this weekend for the Virginia Festival of the Book and was trying to go to sleep at night and I could hear the people on the other side of the wall. And I was thinking about Frost saying that poetry is like hearing someone speak on the other side, like through a wall.

David J Bauman (06:59)
You

Han VanderHart (07:19)
and you cannot hear the words, all you hear are the tones. And it's just like, that's one of the best descriptions of poetry ever. And he could just do stuff like that all the time. Like his writing is full of like aphoristic kind of sounding sage advice like that.

David J Bauman (07:22)
Hmm.

That is.

Yeah,

yeah,

was this part of you were at that time maybe trying to do, I've got a goal. I'm gonna try to write so many poems this week while I'm here.

or where do you think this came from? Was it a lump in the throat or was it just watching the scenery and thinking?

This makes me feel some kind of way. I'm going to write about it and see where we go.

Han VanderHart (07:57)
That's a good question. I do not usually make myself write every day or do challenges where I write like a poem a month or I like to do things when I'm not supposed to do them. So if you know, if I'm late for work, that's when I'll sit down at the counter and write or, ⁓ you know, at work or so I can't remember if I actually wrote it there.

David J Bauman (08:12)
Yes.

Yeah.

Han VanderHart (08:28)
Maybe I did, or if I just kind of collected the image there, you know, sat with it. Because I remember the end of this poem at first, it ended with is that I do not know this either. But I think it was but that I do not know this either. And it didn't have the penultimate line. And that came a lot later when I was thinking about the birds in the book.

David J Bauman (08:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Han VanderHart (08:52)
and attention and thinking about animals.

David J Bauman (08:57)
It's a perfect going back, circling back to that opening line, the wing of it. And I was thinking about that as I was reading it earlier, that

the opposite of it's not important is the wing of it. The beak, the onyx eye, I mean, very important parts of the bird.

of the bird that you weren't sure why it was named what it was And that's the way I remembered that was, I think, early on watching birds and someone had said, Oh, well, it sounds like that, that cooing that it does, it sounds more like it's kind of pigeon like, but it sounds like it's in mourning. It's okay. That's a terrible I don't do bird imitations, by the way.

I think I could do a great horned owl and fool my Merlin app. But ⁓ that's about it. it's a beautiful piece. And the confession that...

Han VanderHart (09:44)
No, I knew what you talking about.

David J Bauman (10:02)
As much certainty as we might have about things, you know, we don't really have certainty at all.

What else would you like to say about invocation? mean,

It has almost like a religious overtone, a, I'm going to begin the service now. I'm going to begin the prayer now. But what I love about it is that it's not at all preachy. There's, it's, it's a lot about the maybe certainty of uncertainty of what we don't know.

Han VanderHart (10:31)
Yeah, I mean, I'm a 17th centuryist by training. I I was, I always say I'm a recovering Miltonist. So for me, the invocation is with epics and the invocation to the muse. And so here it's like, well, it's an invocation to not knowing because that's really where this book had to begin is uncertainty and not knowing.

David J Bauman (10:36)
Yeah, I was reading that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's always a great place to

you chose a poem to read for us called Ode to Knowing. And I'd like to ask if you'd want to read that for us now.

sorry, I jumped into that quick.

Han VanderHart (11:13)
No, no, you're perfect. got it. Okay.

Ode to Knowing. The orchard in my childhood. Apple, pear, cherry I fell from and a plum tree neglected every spring. A jelly fungus taking the purple fruit. No soft plums in the fridge. There was so much

I thought I could not have. Obedience I thought I had to give. My child body bruised. My heart kept like an abandoned fruit tree or goat to a tether. I did not buck. I did not bite. I stood in the long grasses. I've since learned that a child cannot provide.

that fruit and animals both need tending hands. Hold me, calm me, were words that for years I could not say. But now I feel the wisteria around my thighs. The landscape curls with relief. There is ripe fruit in the shape of your mouth.

David J Bauman (12:33)
And we go so nicely from not knowing to something entitled the Ode to Knowing. We've had a lot of odes this ⁓ season of the podcast as well. kind of find myself starting to say that more and more as the episodes go on, because part of what fascinates me is how the poems speak to each other and ⁓ how we kind of

maybe not even knowing that we're playing off of each other, but we're wrestling with some of the same themes and that same, that same sea of art. And I think for me, when I think about why I write, it has to do with wanting to explore and wanting to find something out,

⁓ What do I know? Where does this go? When you start a poem like this, ⁓ this is a question I ask frequently. Do you often have an idea of where it's going when you start? Or do you start with an image or a line and follow it from there?

Han VanderHart (13:37)
So, I mean, especially if I'm writing something that is like a sonnet in the way this poem is like a sonnet in some sense. ⁓ I think I often think of sonnets as being kind of poem sized.

David J Bauman (13:54)
Yeah, was going

to say, although it's think 16 or 17 lines, it is, it's very sonnet-like and it definitely has a Volta in the middle. We'll get to that.

Han VanderHart (14:03)
And I love that with a sonnet, you can be very linear in your logic. So you, mean, it's not circling. It's not doing a lot of different things that other forms do. So you can kind of go from point A to point Z or whatever you want to in a beautiful line. ⁓ And that's so great with narrative, among other things. It's great with argument. It's great with love poems that also have an argument. ⁓ So

David J Bauman (14:26)
Mm-hmm.

Han VanderHart (14:32)
I think that this one I really began with the orchard thinking about the orchard and I'm fairly certain I named it after I wrote it. Titles are not usually something that come at the beginning.

David J Bauman (14:32)
Mmm.

Yeah, for me either.

It's something that ⁓ whenever I try to write, I was talking to Sadik about this whenever I try to write something to a title, it I always end up with something else. The title I started with is not the thing that fits.

But yeah, titles then often for me, it's a way of.

maybe into what I was writing or some compliment to the piece that maybe answers a question within it or brings up a question that gets it into it. ⁓ It's never something that really I start a piece with. And we said about it having this this Volta. Well, there's there's a couple of things. I mean, you start with the image and ⁓ the image is an orchard of my childhood.

There's so much I thought I could not have.

obedience I have had to give. really took me back to my childhood. I was the youngest of six. So I had to be very careful because anything that my older brothers did got blamed on me. We had a father who I get along with wonderfully now, but at the time I was terrified of and learned how to be a diplomat just, you know, by not saying

Han VanderHart (15:42)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

David J Bauman (16:00)
the wrong thing or the wrong tone that would set him off or, you know, get me in trouble In just so very few words, there's a lot there that takes me back into my own childhood. You know, my child body bruised. My heart kept like an abandoned fruit tree. Or goat to a tether.

have you ever had a goat? that's out of your rural past?

Han VanderHart (16:24)
Yeah, my sister's raised goats. No, no, mean, I mean, it's interesting to me because there are lots of people who kind of romanticize ⁓ raising animals or pigs or whatever it is. ⁓ And you can't romanticize them as much if you grew up with them. It's just like like people are like, my God, pigs.

David J Bauman (16:26)
It seems like such a trivial question, I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Han VanderHart (16:52)
cannot look to the sky. This is the most tragically heartbreaking thing. And I'm like, have you met pigs? They are terrible. They're the worst animals. You know, sometimes they're cute and pot-bellied pigs, but usually they're awful. They're awful animals. They're pretty violent. They are carnivorous. They will eat baby chicks. like people haven't lived with them. ⁓ They destroy the earth. So yeah, I was raised on a small scale farm.

David J Bauman (16:58)
you

you

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

you

I have an employee at the library that we have to keep in mind to have to be careful not if we're depending on her to open that we have to make sure that she knows well ahead of time because she's got to deal with the goats before she leaves the house and you never know what might happen with the goats.

Han VanderHart (17:40)
love the goats, I love the goats. And we used to bottle feed the baby goats in the kitchen and they were ⁓ Nigerian dwarf goats, so they're small and they were for dairy milk. that's what my sisters, they bred them and made cheese and yogurt and milk.

David J Bauman (17:50)
⁓ okay.

okay. Goat cheese.

Goat cheese pizza is one of my favorite things. But back to the serious thing. ⁓ You didn't bite. I did not bite. I stood in the long grasses. And that turn is I've since learned that a child cannot provide.

But don't you think, wow, as a kid, you just feel like I'm the one who's got to hold this whole thing together. I think that was one of the things with me is being a parent, trying to remember that I need to never let them feel like they're in that position. But then you can never really stop that from happening. When it does happen, it can be heartbreaking, you know.

when you find out that a child is saying, it was our fault that this happened. was it our fault that you and mom got divorced because the house was a mess? my God, no, no, no. So it's hard to, hard to prevent that, but there's a lot that goes on in little kids, little kids mind. You're walking a...

Han VanderHart (18:32)
Yeah.

David J Bauman (18:55)
tightrope of survival sometimes. It's not all. That's another thing people romanticize is just childhood. You know, and maybe there are, mean, not maybe there are people who've had probably pretty good childhoods. You know, but even the good ones, there's, there's a lot of.

Stuff going on in a kid's mind,

And to learn yourself, this isn't my job to take care of all of this.

Han VanderHart (19:19)
Yeah.

David J Bauman (19:20)
But ⁓ you think about the weight that a child carries, especially if the child, was bruised and abused.

Han VanderHart (19:29)
And I can't even remember which Robert Frost poem it is, but he has that one has the echo of provide, provide. And it's so heavy in that poem. And I would have to look it up. It's been literally probably over a dozen years since I've read this poem. ⁓ But I remember that kind of insistence and the weight and there's almost like a little bit of threat in it. So for me, the word provide is also very like Frostium.

David J Bauman (19:38)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Han VanderHart (19:58)
But it does get after the parentified child that, you know, expecting a child to do the work of adults or care for other siblings or become the surrogate, like spouse in some ways or, yeah.

David J Bauman (20:13)
very

different from the Swinger of Birch's kind of childhood. This is more of a child from like Out Out where there's that chainsaw accident that's just...

there was a time when that was the whole reason for having kids is to have people to run the farm and to take over the business and you know, just legalized child labor. I don't want to diminish that there weren't any loving parental feelings at all. again, we can romanticize that when we shouldn't.

And the child here, of course, you've already compared yourself to a tree in the orchard, a fruit tree in the orchard. And so realizing, and I'm saying you, of course, meaning the speaker of the poem, which isn't always me when I'm writing, but maybe some form of me or.

borrows something from my voice.

But I think I think a lot of times people realize that when they're reading a poem that they're not that it's not not everything is is 100 percent autobiographical.

But you're drawing the feelings from somewhere. even in a persona poem.

Talk to me about now I feel the wisteria around my thighs. it's such a release from I stood in the tall grasses. I did not bite that whole thing.

What made you think to write that line? It's just lovely.

Han VanderHart (21:36)
Thank you. mean, Wisteria is so lush. I mean, I live in North Carolina. So when the Wisteria blooms, it is it's so gorgeous and it's climbed up high and a lot of the pine trees near us and all over town. And I mean, literally, you know, I'll take my child somewhere and the parking lot will be just littered with blossoms and the vines are draped down. I mean, it's

David J Bauman (21:42)
Yeah.

Han VanderHart (22:03)
I can't remember if it's a parasite or an epiphyte. I feel like it's maybe a parasite, but ⁓ maybe not. Maybe it's an epiphyte, but it does kind of strangle the trees. It's also like, it smells incredible. It's so beautiful. And I think I just love the sensuality of the image and being able to kind of embrace the body.

David J Bauman (22:15)
Yeah.

Han VanderHart (22:29)
as opposed to this image that you often see in the country and in rural areas of an animal that's been tied to a stake or a run, or like just negligence, right? That animals just said like, okay, you can't go anywhere, you're going to stay here, but we're not going to care for you and look after you, you're just going to be, it's like the dog in Patricia Smith's blood dazzler poem that left, right? So as opposed to that,

David J Bauman (22:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Han VanderHart (22:58)
there's this agency of feeling that with Syria and the landscape curling with relief, right?

David J Bauman (23:05)
Yeah,

and the fact that you are, comfortable with that, rather than it being a bruised fruit

The hold me, calm me were words that for years I could not say.

But yeah, that speaks of again, I think that's the kid that I thought of from Frost was from Out Out.

where you've got a kid that is doing all the work of an adult and doing the providing as you said and cutting the wood and I have to wonder sometimes when I read some of Frost's poems like Home Burial and you may know better having studied you know a little more of his writing and what influenced what I sometimes wonder if those are some of the same characters

or spin-offs of some of the same characters from one poem to another. The father then just kind of tossing the dirt or something, and the mother hating him for just the casualness of that.

Han VanderHart (24:02)
There's so much isolation in Frost and even in, ⁓ you know, the Swinger of the Birches, it's at a place, you know, it's too far removed from town for baseball, right? And so like, this is what the child is doing because there's no organized sports because they're not being taken to those things. So they're amusing themselves, right? It is still an environment of

David J Bauman (24:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Han VanderHart (24:31)
negligence in some sense. So it's kind of a through line through Frost, think. Isolation and abandonment.

David J Bauman (24:32)
yeah.

And I know

it sounds like we both kind of grew up at a time where you just kind of had to take care of yourself. Did you have others you had to take care of?

Han VanderHart (24:45)
Yeah.

I was the third down of seven kids. So ⁓ I was actually recently talking to someone about that. And I think I was eight years old when my mom put an infant in my hands and said, ⁓ the baby has colic. Take her outside and rock her. ⁓ So I cared a lot for my younger sisters.

David J Bauman (25:11)
Wow.

at what age do you think you first were able to?

be that kind of person in the poem who could embrace walking through the wisteria and feel it. Were you an adult by then? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really, I would have to agree. think that, mean, and unfortunately in my case, in a very religious, oppressively

Han VanderHart (25:24)
Late, ⁓ yeah, mean, this is late thirties, lots of therapy.

David J Bauman (25:46)
evangelical religious upbringing. yeah, I really don't think I was an adult.

until at least 30

I think that's interesting too that somebody from a different

position or a different lineup in a family like that can still identify with the miracle of poetry, being able to say something in a way that someone with very different experience than you still gets the idea of the goats or the wisteria versus the grass,

And then the ode to knowing. But it's a different sort of, I think it's more of a know thyself kind of thing in this poem. And know what I can take responsibility for and the things that I have to let go of.

Han VanderHart (26:34)
Yeah, and there's a lot of, guess, you know, again, recovering Miltonist, if you see an apple in a poem, right, like biblical knowledge to know someone in there's also like the intimate sense, right, the biblical forms of knowing. So there's a lot of kind of play with that. That's kind of easily accessible. You you mentioned like growing up in a, in con...

David J Bauman (26:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Han VanderHart (27:00)
It sounded conservative, evangelical, exactly same with me.

David J Bauman (27:01)
yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's probably why I identified with your writing right off the bat. And I think I feel that way about Christine Noel Kaufman's writing as well. And ⁓ gosh, now who was it? Your mother's bear gun.

Han VanderHart (27:07)
Yeah.

Amazing.

Mmm, Corey Williamson.

David J Bauman (27:23)
Yeah, yeah, very different style. But I could I could really ⁓ I could identify with it. I think it's sort of the miraculous with with poems, it's not miraculous. mean, it's work, but ⁓ it makes it feel like a miracle when you read it, when it's done well, that somebody like Frank O'Hara.

was heavily involved in the bustle and hustle, as they say, of New York City and a museum curator and poet and lots of references to current events and culture. yet, yet to make some country bumpkin like me, who went to the city plenty of times.

But at first, in the early days, the idea of going to the city, that meant that we were driving to Williamsport, a town of about 20,000 people up the river from us. That was the city. So it took me probably, I think my first trip to New York wasn't until I was maybe 17 years old. Yeah.

Han VanderHart (28:26)
wow.

David J Bauman (28:28)
But when you can read something like that and still, they still bring that world alive to you. That's some of the fun of the poetry, even if it's a heartbreaking sort of piece. Like in some ways this is, but then just has this sort of salvation at the end. The landscape curls with relief that the Wisteria, I was thinking of, we were talking about ⁓ Liesel Mueller's

poem Monet refuses the operation and the whole idea of things not necessarily being as separate as we think they are. And in this way, the landscape covered with wisteria reminds me of that bridge that was covered with ivy. That it's not ivy and a bridge, it's a bridge covered with ivy and all of that can be one thing.

And the beautiful image of the last line, there is ripe fruit in the shape of your mouth. That's just lovely. That's just lovely.

So tell me about the poem that you chose by another poet that you'd like to read.

Han VanderHart (29:27)
So this is Boston Seaport, July 2024. And it's by Catherine Rockwood, who is a good friend of mine and also an early modernist by training. So if I want to laugh about something regarding Milton or Ben Johnson with someone, it's going to be Catherine. We also both have a love of...

probably unreformed dogs and just dogs in general. So ⁓ Katherine is also my dog friend. And Katherine is the author of Dog Witch among other things, among other chapbooks. And that one is from Bottle Cap Press and it came out last year and it's excellent.

David J Bauman (29:56)
Hehehehehe

Mmm.

Maybe I can grab a link to that and put it down in the show notes as well.

Han VanderHart (30:16)
this is an incredible poem. It's one of two that were published at the same time in my journal Moist Poetry Journal.

And I think it shows a lot of identity between Katherine and I's work, but also some really some kind of quintessential Rockwood moves, I think, as well.

David J Bauman (30:34)
I love that.

go ahead and read that for us.

Han VanderHart (30:38)
This is Boston Seaport, July 2024. Where the unpredictability of the body meets weather is the world. To weather is to survive and fall apart like this. I am weathering every day and laughing sometimes, loving my children according to their specific ways.

Even as cloud comes down to the water and summer loses its sum becomes mare a salty fog we swim in having missed the sea.

David J Bauman (31:20)
Nice.

Han VanderHart (31:20)
And I said Mare

but it might be pronounced mer in that. I don't know. I should know.

David J Bauman (31:26)
⁓ That's all right. That's okay.

Well, I mean, it's without having looked up the origin of the word, I'm just assuming does that the implication of the poem, at least is as mer being of water like ⁓ Merman or mermaid. The salty fog we swim in now ⁓ having missed the sea.

Han VanderHart (31:42)
like mermaid.

I think I think of the French word right away with me, you know, and so it's like, mare ⁓ But

David J Bauman (31:55)
That's okay.

It works. mean, and one of the beautiful things about poetry too, is that when someone says tree, you may have a reason to say like, jack pine or, or something very specific, or you may want to be a little more vague, because it could mean a lot of things to a lot of different people, depending on what you're doing in the poem, because tree could, you know, one person pictures palm tree, one person pictures

oak, someone might picture, you know, the tree that Jesus was crucified on or something, you know. So I think if there's some other possibility left open, I give the author the benefit of the doubt that, hey, they liked that implication that that was a possible direction my brain could go.

I'm back at that Monet refusing the operation again, because you've got where the unpredictability of the body, I think of the weather being unpredictable, but the body here, unpredictable is intriguing. where the body meets the weather is the world and.

where literally where the body is meeting the weather and that is the world. but also the two things being the same thing, because the body is part of the world, too.

to whether is to survive and fall apart.

Han VanderHart (33:08)
like this.

Thanks.

David J Bauman (33:12)
Yeah,

beautiful stuff. What drew you to this poem ⁓ in particular?

Han VanderHart (33:17)
I mean, one of the things I love about it is the form and that it begins in tercets and becomes couplets and then becomes like mono-stitch. So it has those broken lines or those single lines. So it kind of shows its own weathering as the poem goes. And like you, the unpredictability, the body, think what with age and queerness and gender

David J Bauman (33:24)
Mm-hmm. Couplets.

Yeah. Yeah.

Han VanderHart (33:47)
queerness and raising children who become different human beings all the time. so like the weathering, the idea of like living with your children and weathering so many different emotions, I think I sometimes describe it as like being a lightning rod to my children's emotions. So, you know, in the sea, right, nothing is more mercurial.

David J Bauman (33:47)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Han VanderHart (34:15)
than how we think about the weather and the sea. And so that beautiful image, I think that's the really big image in this poem. But so is the body, but so is the caretaker, but so is the weather. It's got all these big players.

David J Bauman (34:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, when you think about, ⁓ you know, ancient writings and old imagery and symbolism and you think about, the sea is the mother of all things and, the body that's come forth from it, but also part of it and part of the world even though you're not in the sea, the fog that we all swim in. Yeah.

And speaking of implications, you know, I hear mist, M-I-S-S-E-D, but my head also hears mist and sea and fog. And that's just that's lovely language right there. weathering away in the in the visuals of the way that poem goes, as you said, from tersets all the way down to just single lines.

Han VanderHart (35:07)
Yeah.

David J Bauman (35:19)
but also a, I guess could we say a distilling,

coming from many into, you know, one focused, intense thing, which ends up the sea at the end.

Han VanderHart (35:28)
you

Yeah.

Yeah. And the balance of those opening lines, I think, and that the poet kind of invites those lines to be disrupted. Because again, guess, you know, Beowulf is the token here, but to come back to like the consonants that crosses across, you know, the lines meets weather is the world. I think that's just so beautiful. And it feels very like medieval or early modern, a move to make.

David J Bauman (35:41)
Mm.

Yeah.

Han VanderHart (36:02)
very early modern in the sense of like, let's talk about the place of the body in the world. The body is a social, cosmopolitan figure and you know, it's age of exploration and everything else. So it's, there's, but it's also very existential and introspective. so I think that's really lovely. And the sound of it is really beautiful too.

David J Bauman (36:07)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and it does all that, those big themes as you said, also becomes very everyday, right? Smack in the middle with, know, literally the words every day, I'm weathering every day. And there's a comma there that says, mean, I'm weathering, not I'm weathering every day, but I'm weathering every day and laughing sometimes. Obviously not all the time.

Han VanderHart (36:35)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

David J Bauman (36:47)
loving my children according to their specific ways. Isn't that so true? Because what's funny to one might really be infuriating to another.

So what else do you want to say about this poem?

Han VanderHart (37:03)
you

I like the specificness of place in the title and time and that it's doing something documentary or like I love things that act like again, like you said, the ordinary life that the journaling and the noting and ⁓ the keeping track of or like, you know, this is an ordinary day. There's nothing particularly, you know, there's no particular drama or action that happens.

David J Bauman (37:08)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Han VanderHart (37:33)
And yet

it is important and yet it's specific, right? I tell my students all the time that good writing is specific. It's not big like you name places, but it also it doesn't spend a lot of time on itself, the title. And it's not one of those titles that's going to leave you exhausted.

David J Bauman (37:41)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, that seems to be that's delightful to read sometimes. Gosh, and I don't mean to upset any poets out there who've just written a long title. I write some very long titles sometimes, and they can be fun. They can be fun. But sometimes it feels like I don't know if it was just it might be just an Instagram.

Han VanderHart (38:07)
same. Yeah.

David J Bauman (38:16)
⁓ algorithm thing that I was suddenly getting a lot of them recently where it felt like, you know, the way a headline can sometimes sound like if you're not careful. I mean, the headline really is often to trick you into reading. But if you're not careful, you can just take the headline as, that's the whole story. This star died at age 88 or whatever, and you move on without reading it.

But here you've got the title as being a very anchoring thing,

It's nice to have that title as something that kind of nails it down, like you said, to a specific place. ⁓ But also lets you know that the mind is wandering of the speaker, you know,

Beautiful piece, beautiful choice. So what do you want our listeners to know? What are you working on next? You have had a very busy year and you continue. ⁓ I'm going to put some links to Larks is the latest book, right? And you said you're working on, you have a manuscript that is being sent out. What are you working on next? What's on the docket next for you?

Han VanderHart (39:20)
So yes, I'm sending out my manuscript. That wast mild and lovely. And I've still been working on it a little bit. And I also finished, I just finished an essay collection called What Haunts. And I've just begun sitting that out as well. And we just had seven books published this spring at River River. So that took most of my attention. I'm...

David J Bauman (39:31)
Mm. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, you were putting out quite a bit.

Han VanderHart (39:46)
grateful for how poetry can fit into the margins of your life because this semester between the press and teaching and my normal job, I've just been really, really busy and I never want to do it again. I would like to be less busy. That's my goal. ⁓ Because I'm behind David. I feel behind on everything right now. So I'm really looking forward to a little time soon, I hope in the summer to catch up on things.

David J Bauman (39:49)
Hmm.

Hahaha!

Yeah.

Well, thank you for taking some of your time to sit with me and talk about these poems. It's been delightful and it's actually been restorative.

Han VanderHart (40:26)
David. This was so kind and I know it's evening for both of us, so I really appreciate it. Thank you.

David J Bauman (40:31)
That's all right. I

I loved every second of it and I look forward to talking to you some more in the future.

Have a good night.

Han VanderHart (40:38)
It was wonderful.

Thank you,

In Three Poems (40:42)
Thank you once again for the generous gift of your time. updates and upcoming episodes, you can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, or Blue Sky. And our screen name is always In3Poems, spelled out, In-T-H-R-E-E, poems. Down in the show notes, you'll find a link that says, text the show. Please drop us a line there. And you'll also find a link to support the show. I'll be adding a little extra bonus content there.

really soon that will hopefully serve to keep us in contact in between seasons as well. I'm David J. Bauman, and I'm so grateful that you were able to join us for another Conversation in Three Poems.